Global Perspective, American Physics
Consider the nine nations with the most Nobel Prize laureates: the United States,
the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia, Poland, Japan, Austria, and Italy. These
nations are colored for visibility on the adjoining world map. Let's take
a look at the distribution of Nobel Prizes awarded for achievements in phyiscs.
The United States is the front-runner in this category, as seen by its deep red coloring.
The color scale goes from green to yellow to red, with green representing fewer laureates
and red representing more laureates. If you hover your cursor over the United States, you
will learn that there have been seventy American laureates recognized for their achievements
in physics.
Curl Up with a Good (French) Book
Let's take a closer look at the nations that lie in Europe, namely the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, and Russia. Let's
also change the category in question from physics to literature. import
immediately becomes clear that French writers have won far more prizes than
the writers of any other European nation. If you hover your cursor over France,
you will see that there have been thirteen Nobel laureates from France. The
European nation with the second-highest number of prize-winning writers is Germany,
with only 8, 60% less than France.This figure attests to the prestige of French
culture around the world and in the eyes of the Nobel Committee.
Einsteins and Steinbecks
Over the past century, many laureates have migrated from one country to another.
The adjoining chord diagram shows how laureates move across the world throughout
their lives: each arc on the outer circle represents one of the top-nine nations
and one additional arc to represent the rest of the world. The inner ribbons show
the relationship between where a laureate was born and where that laureate died.
Hover your mouse over a ribbon to see the number of laureates the ribbon represents
and click on an arc to show only the ribbons representing immigration towards the
selected country.
A number of insights can be gained from this graph. The first is that the United States
has almost as many laureates as the rest of the world (excluding the other top nine nations).
Even if you account for differences in population, this hints at the scientific, political,
and economic power of the US throughout the twentieth century. Not one American-born laureate, such as John Steinbeck,
immigrated. Of the laureates who immigrated away from their homes in the rest of the world, the majority of them went to the US, such as the
German-Swiss physicist Albert Einstein. In addition, this chart shows how despite producing many
Nobel laureates, Poland retained very few of these scientists, writers,and activists; almost all of them moved away.
Old Money and Young Peace
As the culmination of a lifetime of work, the distinction of winning a Nobel Prize often comes later in life,
though this might not always be the case. Take a look at the adjoining line chart showing the average age of
laureates per year by category. Click on the color swatches in the legend to plot each category's average age line.
Click again on the swatch to remove the line.
While the average age might vary from year to year, there are general trends that are worth noticing. The award for economics has
never been presented to someone under the age of 50, the highest lower bound of any category. The prize for peace, however, has been
awarded to laureates as young as 17 (Malala Yousafzai in 2014, the youngest laureate ever). The nature of pacifist activism means that age is not a prerequisite for success.
Additionally, the average age of physics laureates has been steadily increasing since about 1960. What other trends can you spot?
Gender Parity and the World Wars
It is no secret that women have not had as many opportunities for political and scientific recognition as men have had. This is plainly
visible in the adjoining line chart, which tracks the number of Nobel Prizes won by men and women each year. Although women have certainly
won Nobel Prizes throughout the twentieth century, men have always won more, both per year and cumulatively.
This chart also shows the effect the World Wars had on the awarding of Nobel Prizes. The steep drops in the number of both men and women
laureates between 1914-1918 and 1939-1942 represent the First World War and the Second World War, respectively.
Although one would hope that the disparity of awards going to men and women would have dissipated by the beginning of the twenty-first
century, this is not the case. As the chart shows, women still earn on average fewer awards then men and have never been awarded more prizes
than men for any given year.